I fear for BillyTea. When the zombies attack, I fear his spicey brains will be a prime target. Until then, I will bask in his enlightenment.

They'll have to get through all the poisonous stuff first. And if anywhere has things poisonous to affect zombies...

Awww, man, Toola the otter who fostered pups for years at Monterey Bay Aquarium died.

We saw her taking care of one of her latest charges when we last visited.

Kind of a sniff inducing story. Would make a good Pixar movie.

Oh man. I was just watching something on her (or another foster otter, can't remember the name) yesterday.

Holy cow the screaming when the pup was taken away to get examined. Like he was being maimed and tortured. And then they plunged him back into the pool and they were clinging together and whoa. Excuse me for a second.

Are Australians less likely to poke poisonous things with sticks?

The ones that make it to puberty at least.

Generally speaking, I suspect the answer is yes, but not by a huge amount. (I think we're more likely to take "it might be venomous" as the default setting for things we don't recognise. Because it is more likely to be venomous.) However, bear in mind too that most of our venomous stuff stays comfortably out of the way, so though we have lots of venomous species, that doesn't necessarily translate to a lot of one-on-one encounters.

What swings it, to me, is that I didn't limit it to being poisoned by an animal. We have venomous stuff; we don't have much that will kill you for food. You have genuine land predators that could take a human. (We have crocs, and they truly are dangerous, but they stay in the sparsely populated far north.)

My maths, then, is: chances of a toxic death are pretty similar in either country (rattlers for you, brown snakes, tiger snakes and taipans for us), but chances of a mauling death are greater over there. Not that either country is exactly seeing epidemic levels. Not like, say, the many thousands of snakebite deaths in India each year.

My maths, then, is: chances of a toxic death are pretty similar in either country (rattlers for you, brown snakes, tiger snakes and taipans for us), but chances of a mauling death are greater over there.

Colbert was right about the bears.

I really hope this OKcupid link works, because this is the greatest thing i've seen all day and you MUST look at the pics

Wow. That's...living the cliche, there.

I will admit that I got distracted by the "wtf is that instrument?"

does it work? Maybe I should re-write my OKC profile.

Depends on who you are trying to attract...(and how much you enjoy the smell of patchouli.)